Only about 50 percent know that humans
didn't live at the time of the dinosaurs.

­Science & Engineering Indicators
2000, published by the National Science
Foundation

Scientific illiteracy is a big problem in this
country, and scientists have to do something
about it, said two Stanford faculty members who
were part of a Feb. 16 panel called
"Cultivating the Civic Scientist" at
the annual meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science.

Because of this problem, many people fear
things they don't understand, the press
legitimizes inaccurate and erroneous
pseudo-science, and the government sometimes
promulgates wrongheaded and dangerous public
policies, said Lucy Shapiro, a microbiologist.

Scientists need to write and teach about
science whenever and however they can, be
connected to the news media and advise policy
makers when an important scientific question
arises, she said.

"A civic scientist is one who is willing
to engage in a dialogue about the nature of
science, the future of science and its potential
impacts on society," said Michael Riordan, a
particle physicist. "The highest expression
of the term 'civic scientist' refers to a
scientist who disinterestedly makes his expertise
available to further the welfare of the
country."

On issues from missile defense to antibiotic
resistance and breast cancer policies, the
government needs the advice that only scientists
can provide. Riordan and Shapiro both fulfill
that civic obligation, but also educate the
public through their writing and speaking.

"People are hungry to hear this
stuff," Shapiro said, referring to the
public's appetite for clear explanations of
science. "Newspeople consistently
underestimate the curiosity of a typical TV
audience and their tolerance for learning
something." About 15 years ago, she decided
she had to do something about it. "I lecture
whenever I can because I'm a clear speaker,"
Shapiro said. "Not everyone can do it, but
those who can should."

Riordan agrees that the popular press isn't
capable of covering the more difficult scientific
stories. That's one reason he has written four
books, with a fifth on the way. "The more
complex stories may have to be written by
scientists themselves," he said.

The civic physicist

Riordan was a member of the team that
discovered quarks at the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the early 1970s. But
his career has taken a different path in the last
15 to 20 years: He writes books for the general
public about science, the history of science and
science policy. Moreover, he teaches a course on
the history of 20th-century physics in Stanford's
Program in History and Philosophy of Science.

He also gets calls from the press on a regular
basis and often is quoted in newspapers and
magazines. His own stories for the New York
Times and New Scientist and Science
magazines have covered such topics as the
discovery of neutrinos, the search for the Higgs
boson and the need for a major new American
particle collider.

During his career, Riordan has worked closely
with a number of people he considers great civic
scientists. He points to SLAC's Wolfgang Panofsky
and Sidney Drell, whose contributions to nuclear
arms control are widely known.

Riordan himself served on a panel that drafted
the American Physical Society's recently
published official position on the technical
viability of a national missile defense system,
urging the United States not to deploy such a
system unless it is proven effective against
anticipated countermeasures.

But Riordan says scientists don't have to be
bigshots to play important roles in public life.
"To become a scientist involved in policy,
it helps to spend time on committees getting to
know the policy issues and the policy
makers," he said. Federal agencies like the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission and the State Department
all need science advisers.

Scientists also play an important role in
civic life when they interact with the press.
Unfortunately, Riordan said, many scientists are
leery of the press. "They see that reporters
don't always get things right and leave out
complexities and qualifiers scientists feel are
necessary to explain their work."

Nevertheless, scientists have to overcome
their fears and distrusts and learn to tell the
public, through the news media, why it's
important to do what they do, he said: "The
press is the conduit to a large and influential
audience."

The civic biologist

Lucy Shapiro, the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig
Professor of Cancer Research in the Department of
Developmental Biology, is a laboratory scientist,
first and foremost. But about 15 years ago she
decided she could also be a civic scientist. It's
hard to do both in early stages of a scientific
career, she said. When she was an assistant and
then associate professor, she was too busy
getting grants, running a lab and starting a
family.

"But there comes a time in your career
when you can do more," Shapiro said. She
could have written a textbook or started a
company, but making science accessible to the
public was the best fit for Shapiro's strength:
public speaking.

"I'm just a run-of-the-mill scientist
trying to make people less frightened about
technology," she said. "To make
intelligent decisions, there's no substitute for
real information."

The talks she gives to the public often reach
only a few people, but on occasion she speaks to
policy makers. At one point, Shapiro was invited
to the White House along with several other
scientists to speak to President Clinton and his
Cabinet about the risks biologically altered
pathogens pose to national security and the food
supply.

After a period of scripted presentations, the
Cabinet members were getting sleepy. When she
stood up to speak, Shapiro went off-script.

"Do you know what genetic engineering
is?" she asked.

"Why don't you tell us," Clinton
said.

As she spoke, Clinton shooed away aides, who
were peeved because Shapiro had made him late for
other appointments.

So Shapiro taught the Cabinet members that
genetic engineering goes on in nature all the
time: Bacteria can pick up genetic material from
other bacteria and add it to their own, all
without human intervention. In fact, she said,
nature added a toxin gene to the E. coli
that made killers out of some Jack in the Box
hamburgers in the '90s. And it is nature that
encourages the evolution of bacteria into
antibiotic-resistant forms. The lesson: We have
more to fear from nature than from international
terrorists.

During a videotaped talk to the National
Academy of Sciences, Shapiro delivered the same
message. The videotape is one of the most
commonly requested in the academy's collection.

Before she began speaking to the public,
Shapiro "worked very hard to do it
right." Early on, she practiced her speeches
on her physicist husband, who had to stop her
"every two seconds to ask what a word
meant." She eventually learned that she need
not use complicated lingo to get the information
across.

Though her research involves bacteria, Shapiro
also speaks about other scientific subjects. A
few years ago she decided to address people's
fears about breast cancer. She made it her
business to learn everything she could about
breast cancer, and she started speaking to groups
of women about it. "This is what is
real," she told the women. "Only 5
percent of breast cancer is inherited."

And in the early '90s, she reached out to
educate even larger audiences about science and
scientists. Along with other board members from
the Scientists' Institute for Public Information,
she met with John Lithgow and other prominent
Hollywood figures. "We told them to stop
presenting images of mad scientists and to make
them human," she said. "It didn't work,
but we tried."